Hard Times in the Country: The Schools

Anne Lewis. 1988.

This documentary explores the impact of the federal government's War on Poverty on school systems in eastern Kentucky and describes how the "solutions" that were implemented often failed to meet the needs of the area's children.  Archival film of President and Mrs. Johnson's 1964 visit to eastern Kentucky is intercut with the views of administrators, poverty workers, teachers, parents, and two generations of students. At the center of the program is the debate over consolidation of the schools in Breathitt County, Kentucky, where some rural children now spend twelve hours a day away from home due to the long bus ride to the town school. Hard Times in the Country also takes a hard look at the effectiveness of channeling certain children out of academic programs and into separate vocational schools where they receive training for jobs that don't exist.

"... shows yet again the U.S. bias in favor of urban over rural. The economics, politics, mores, ethics, and culture of two extreme opposites of governance tend to result in more broken promises for this poor, rural, and suffering educational system." Choice 

"As true now as it ever was." - Judy Meadows, elementary school librarian, Greenup County, Kentucky 

"Pointed in its conclusion that Johnson's War on Poverty was less than successful in Appalachia." - Donald R. Mott, Butler University

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